1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sampling device and a sampling method.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, an electronic musical instrument called a “sampler” can store external sound or music as digital data (hereinafter, “sampling”) and replay these stored data (hereinafter, “sampling data”) through operation of a keyboard or the like.
There are typically several methods in samplers to signal the start and end of sampling. One method of starting and ending sampling is providing an operating element such as a switch for signaling the start and end of sampling, and then starting and ending sampling through user operation of this operating element, for example. There is also a method in which a function called “auto-trigger” is used to automatically start sampling when the level of sound or music inputted through a microphone or the like exceeds a certain threshold. When using this auto-trigger function, sampling is ended through signaling by the operating element, for example.
When obtaining a sound from a percussion instrument such as a drum in order to repeatedly play this obtained sampling data (hereinafter, “looping”) for musical accompaniment, there are times when the obtained sampling data does not meet the required length of time of 1 beat×number of beats. As a result, during looping the rhythm may differ from the lead player performing with this accompaniment, and this could ruin the performance.
It is necessary to set the length of time of 1 beat×number of beats as the required length, but as a countermeasure to the above problem, there is a method in which sampling data of the required length is obtained by ending sampling in accordance with a single beat calculated from pre-configured tempo information (Patent Document 1 2001-075570). There is another possible method to solve the above problem by using an editing function to adjust the length of the sampling data to meet the required length after the sampling data has been obtained.
In Patent Document 1 described above, however, the user must pre-configure the tempo information. It is also possible that the configured tempo does not match the piece being played.
In contrast, in the method in which an editing function is used to adjust the sampling data after being obtained, the data length can be set to match the tempo of the piece being performed. On the other hand, the editing work in this method requires a certain level of skill at operating the device and the like.
Therefore, in either case it is common for operations beyond mere sampling to be required and for the operation itself to be complicated, require a certain level of skill, and be problematic for a beginner.